Troubleshooting/Getting Started
Troubleshooting/getting started Some people seem to be having trouble getting things working, here is how I have been helping people get things going. Don't get wrapped up in the ADB stuff at first. That is needed for unlocking additional features. Focus with getting the basic functionality first, which is mirroring the phone's display on the Superbook. First, make sure you're using the right cable and you've got it plugged in properly. Yes, normally you would expect to be able to use either end of a USB-C cable and not care which side is up, but the cables Sentio made for these are not exactly standard issue USB-C. They adjusted the length of one end a little to make it fit beter into the Superbook. Take a look at the ends of the cable, the white end goes into the SB, the black end goes into your phone. You also need to make sure the Sentio logo faces up when plugged into both devices. Now, uninstall both the Sentio Desktop and DisplayLink Presenter apps and reboot your phone. Find a paper-clip or something of similar size and use it to push & hold the reset button on the bottom of your Superbook for 5 seconds. Connect your phone to the Superbook. Did the screen turn black? If so, good, continue on. If not, disconnect your phone and hit fn-p on the Superbook to disable USB-PD. Some phones can't do USB OTG and USB-PD at the same time, so USB-PD needs to be disabled for this. Check the Supported device page for more info. Re-connect the devices and hopefully at this point the screen has gone black. If it does, disconnect the phone and continue. Next, install just the DisplayLink Presenter app. Make sure your phone is on and unlocked, plug your phone into the SB. Your phone should prompt you for a few permissions and once you've gone through all the questions on the phone, your screen should be mirrored on the SB. This could take up to 60 seconds. If not, disconnect your phone, hit Fn-P on the SB to disable USB-PD (USB Power Delivery, meaning the SB will not attempt to charge your phone), and re-connect the devices. Hopefully, you should have a mirrored screen now. Disconnect your phone and install the Sentio Superbook Updater from the Play Store. Connect the devices and allow the firmware to be updated. When the firmware has finished updating, the SB's screen will flash a few times as it reboots and your screen should be mirrored again. Disconnect your phone and install the Sentio Desktop app from the Play Store. Connect the devices. After the screen mirroring starts, you will be prompted for a few more permissions, which once granted, you should have the Sentio Desktop up and running. Yes, everything is super big now, but you have the basic functionality going. Now it is time to do the ADB stuff to enable changing the DPI as well as enabling floating/resizable windows on supported Android devices. Determine Firmware Version If you download the Sentio Updater from the Google Play store, it will show you the current firmware version if it is lower than the one offered by the Sentio Updater. Sentio Updater seems to be ahead of the Sentio Desktop app on firmware version. The dreaded adb stuff This isn't really that hard, just takes a little work from a command line. The commands are mostly the same, regardless of if you're doing this from Windows, macOS, or Linux. The only real caveat is that for Windows, you might need to install vendor specific drivers for your phone before this works. Before you can use adb, you need to enable USB debugging on your phone. The Chrome adb stuff Sentio points us at seems outdated and most people seem to be having problems with it. The solution is to use the 'real' command line adb. You will need to download the Android platform-tools for your operating system. Unzip the file and pay attention to where you've downloaded it. Most systems these days are default configured to download things into a 'Downloads' directory. On Windows, you can shift-click on the new folder and select 'Open PowerShell window here.' If you're old-school Windows user and prefer the 'cmd' prompt for Windows, you probably know how to find your way to the Downloads folder. For macOS, run the 'Terminal' app, or your favorite macOS terminal program. For Linux, you can use a Gnome term, Kterm, xterm, or even the Linux text console. Mac and Linux users will need to 'cd ~/Downloads/platform-tools', Windows users should already be there. Mac and Linux users will need to use './adb', Windows users using PowerShell need to use '.\adb'. Windows 'cmd' users don't need any prefixing, run them as is (as long as you're in the right directory). Now, the commands to be run. First, connect your phone to your computer and run: adb devices If you've not done adb stuff before, your phone will prompt you for permission, grant it. You should get output similar to: List of devices attached * daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037 * daemon started successfully 43af993e device If you see 'unauthorized' instead of 'device', run it again after you've granted the permission on the phone. 1. To enable multi-window mode on Android-O systems: adb shell settings put global enable_freeform_support 1 If it works, you won't see any output. 2. To allow Sentio Desktop to save customized settings: adb shell pm grant com.sentio.desktop android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS Again, if it works, you won't see any output. 3. Reboot your phone. Additional adb command for OnePlus phone owners For some reason, OnePlus phones disable the OTG option after 10 minutes, to disabled this auto-disable: adb shell settings put global oneplus_otg_auto_disable 0 A quicker way made via batch file Thanks to these two community members, they made a nice batch file to run most the ADB commands for you with a simple setup process. https://github.com/92lleo/superbookQuickstart It's easier if you put this batch file where the ADB is located. Fixing screen resolution and aspect ratio Now that your phone is connected to the Superbook and Sentio Desktop is running, it is time to make it look a little better. On the Sentio Desktop taskbar, click on the gear icon. From the new menu that opens up, click on 'Sentio Settings'. These are all the features that 'enhance' the Superbook/Sentio Desktop experience. The first few are up to you if you want them, the two that I really recommend are the last two, 'Change Screen Resolution to match Superbook' and Dim phone display when using Sentio Desktop.' Scroll down a little further and under 'Others', there should be an option for 'Change Device DPI for better resolution when using Sentio.' This will present you with a slider that ranges from 100% to 400%. IMO, these operate in reverse, but 100% is basically just your phone screen blown up on the 11 inch screen. The higher the percentage you choose, the smaller things will be on the screen. I've found 300% to be a good workable setting. Stopping the onscreen keyboard I only have experience with Samsung devices for this, so others please fill in what you find works. For Samsung devices, click on the keyboard icon on the task bar, there is a slider for 'On-screen keyboard', click it and it should slide left and grey-out. I've seen other people talk about a 'null' keyboard in the Play store than can be installed/selected that should also solve this problem. External keyboard helper Pro is another good option Other notes and thoughts Connecting your phone to the Superbook is supposed to trigger launching two apps on your phone, the DisplayLink Presenter and the Sentio Desktop. For some reason, the Sentio Desktop will always launch, but the DL Presenter does not. I go back and forth between doing soft resets (hitting `fn-power`) and waiting to see if the screen mirrors, or starting the DL Presenter app first, then connecting the devices.